Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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Arthur Schopenhauer

Among 19th century philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer was
among the first to contend that at its core, the universe is not a
rational place. Inspired by Plato and Kant, both of whom regarded the
world as being more amenable to reason, Schopenhauer developed their
philosophies into an instinct-recognizing, mystical, and essentially
ascetic outlook, emphasizing that in the face of what he believed to
be a world filled with endless strife, we ought to minimize our
natural desires in order to achieve a more tranquil frame of mind and
a disposition towards universal beneficence. Often considered to be a
thoroughgoing pessimist, Schopenhauer in fact advocated ways -- via
artistic, moral and ascetic forms of awareness -- to overcome what he
considered to be a frustration-filled and fundamentally painful human
condition. Since his death in 1860, Schopenhauer's philosophy has had
a special attraction for those engaged in music, literature, and the
visual arts.

Exactly a month younger than the English Romantic poet, George Gordon
Noel Byron (1788-1824), the 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale, who was born
on January 22, 1788, Arthur Schopenhauer was born on February 22, 1788
in Danzig [Gdansk, Poland] -- a city which had a long history in
international trade as a member of the Hanseatic League. The
Schopenhauer family was of Dutch heritage, and the philosopher's
father, Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer (1747-1805), was a successful
merchant who groomed his son to assume control of the family's
business. A future in the international business trade was envisioned
from the day Arthur was born, as reflected in how Schopenhauer's
father carefully chose his son's first name on account of its
identical spelling in German, French and English. When Schopenhauer
was five years old, his family moved to Hamburg in March 1793, after
the formerly free city of Danzig was annexed by Prussia.

Schopenhauer toured through Europe with his family as a youngster,
living briefly in England and France, and learning how to speak the
languages of those countries. As he later reported, these experiences
abroad were among the happiest of his life. The professional
occupations of a merchant or banker, however, was not sufficiently
consistent with Schopenhauer's scholarly disposition, and although for
two years after his father's death (in Hamburg, April 20, 1805;
possibly by suicide) Schopenhauer continued to respect the
commercial aspirations his father had had for him, he finally left his
Hamburg business apprenticeship at age 19 to prepare for university
studies. In the meantime, his mother, Johanna Henriette Troisiener
Schopenhauer (1766--1838), who was the daughter of a senator, along
with Schopenhauer's sister, Luise Adelaide [Adele] Lavinia
Schopenhauer (1797-1849), left their Hamburg home at Neuer
Wandrahm 92 and moved to Weimar after Heinrich Floris's death,
where Johanna established a friendship with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(1749-1832). In Weimar, Goethe frequently visited Johanna's
intellectual salon, and Johanna Schopenhauer herself soon became a
well-known writer of the period, producing a voluminous assortment of
essays, novels, biographies, and travelogues.

In 1809, Schopenhauer began studies at the University of
Göttingen, where he remained for two years, first studying
medicine, and then, philosophy. In Göttingen, he absorbed the
views of the skeptical philosopher, Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761-1833),
who introduced him to Plato and Kant. Schopenhauer next enrolled at
the University of Berlin (1811-13), where his lecturers included
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) and Friedrich Schleiermacher
(1768-1834). At age 25, and ready to write his doctoral dissertation,
he then moved in 1813 to Rudolstadt, a small town located a short
distance southwest of Jena, where he lodged for the duration in an inn
named Zum Ritter. Entitling his work The Fourfold Root of
the Principle of Sufficient Reason, it formed the centerpiece of
his later philosophy, articulating arguments he would use to criticize
as charlatans, the prevailing German Idealistic philosophers of the
time, namely, his former lecturer, J. G. Fichte, along with F. W. J.
Schelling (1775-1854) and G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831). In that same
year, Schopenhauer submitted his dissertation to the nearby University
of Jena, and was awarded a doctorate in philosophy in
absentia.

From 1814-1818, Schopenhauer lived in Dresden, developing ideas from
The Fourfold Root into his most famous book, The World as
Will and Representation, which was completed in March of 1818 and
published in December of that same year (with the date, 1819). In
sympathy with Goethe's theory of color, he also wrote during this
time, On Vision and Colors (1816). In Dresden, while living
on the Grosse Meissensche Gasse, Schopenhauer became
acquainted with the philosopher and freemason, Karl Christian
Friedrich Krause (1781-1832), whose panentheistic views appear to have
influenced Schopenhauer rather significantly. Panentheism (i.e.,
all-in-God), as opposed to pantheism (i.e., all-is-God), is the view
that what we can comprehend and imagine to be the universe, is an
aspect of God, but that the being of God is in excess of this
projection, and is neither identical with, nor exhausted by, the
universe we can imagine and comprehend. As we will see below,
Schopenhauer's view of the thing-in-itself is structured much like a
panentheistic position.

After a year's vacation in Italy and with his book in hand,
Schopenhauer applied for the opportunity to give lectures at the
University of Berlin, the institution at which he had formerly
studied, and where two years earlier (1818), Hegel had arrived to
assume Fichte's prestigious philosophical chair. In Italy,
Schopenhauer had been carrying with him a letter of introduction to
Lord Byron that he had been given by Goethe, but when strolling along
the Lido beach in Venice, upon noticing how his female companion
reeled with delight when the nobleman passed by on horseback,
Schopenhauer decided to forego the opportunity to meet Byron.

Schopenhauer's experiences upon returning to Berlin were less than
professionally fruitful, for in March of 1820, he daringly scheduled
his class at a time that was simultaneous with Hegel's popular
lectures, and few students chose to hear Schopenhauer rather than
Hegel. Two years later, in 1822, Schopenhauer left his Berlin
apartment at Früher Niederlagstraße 2 and traveled
to Italy for a second time, returning to Munich a year later. He then
lived in Mannheim and Dresden in 1824 before tracing his way back to
Berlin in 1825. A second attempt to lecture at the University of
Berlin was unsuccessful, and this disappointment was complicated by
Schopenhauer's loss of a lawsuit that had begun several years earlier
in August, 1821. The dispute issued from an angry shoving-match
between Schopenhauer and a seamstress, Caroline Luise Marguet, which
occurred in the rooming house where they had both been living.

Leaving Berlin in 1831 in light of a cholera epidemic that was
entering Germany from Russia, Schopenhauer moved south, first briefly
to Frankfurt-am-Main, and then to Mannheim. Shortly thereafter, in
June of 1833, he settled permanently in Frankfurt, where he remained
for the next twenty-seven years, residing in an apartment along the
river Main's waterfront from 1843 to 1859 at Schöne Aussicht
17. His daily life, living alone with a succession of pet French
poodles (named Atma and Butz), was defined by a
deliberate routine: Schopenhauer would awake, wash, read and study
during the morning hours, play his flute, lunch at an inn called the
Englisher Hof, rest afterwards, read, take an afternoon walk,
check the world events as reported in The London Times,
sometimes attend concerts in the evenings, and frequently read
inspirational texts such as the Upanishads before going to sleep.

During this later phase of his life, Schopenhauer wrote a short work
in 1836, Über den Willen in der Natur (On the Will
in Nature), that aimed to confirm and reiterate his metaphysical
views in light of scientific evidence. He also completed an essay of
which he was immensely proud, “On the Freedom of Human Will”
(“Über die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens”)
in 1839, which was awarded first prize from the Royal Norwegian
Society of Sciences and Letters in Drontheim. A year later, he
complemented this with a second essay, “On the Foundations of
Morality” (“Über die Grundlage der
Moral”) which, although it was the sole submission, was not
honored with an award by The Royal Danish Society of the Sciences in
Copenhagen. Schopenhauer also completed an accompanying volume to
The World as Will and Representation, which was published in
1844 along with the first volume in a combined second edition.

In 1851, Schopenhauer published a set of assorted philosophical
reflections, entitled Parerga and Paralipomena, and within a
couple of years, he began to receive the philosophical recognition for
which he had long hoped. This recognition was stimulated by a
favorable review of Schopenhauer's philosophy published in 1853
without signature in the Westminster Review (“Iconoclasm
in German Philosophy,” by John Oxenford), which, acknowledging
the centrality of the “will” within Schopenhauer's outlook,
drew insightful parallels between Schopenhauer's and Fichte's more
well-known thought. A year after the third edition of The World as
Will and Representation appeared in 1859, Schopenhauer died
peacefully on September 21, 1860, in his apartment in Frankfurt at
Schöne Aussicht 16. He was 72. After
Schopenhauer'sdeath, Julius Frauenstädt published new editions of
most of Schopenhauer's works, with the first complete edition (six
volumes) appearing in 1873.

Schopenhauer donated his estate to help disabled Prussian soldiers and
the families of those soldiers killed, who had participated in the
suppression of the 1848 revolution. An assortment of photographs of
Schopenhauer was taken during his final years, and although they
reveal to us an old man, we should be appreciate that Schopenhauer
completed The World as Will and Representation by the time he
had reached the age of thirty.

Schopenhauer's PhD dissertation of 1813, The Fourfold Root of the
Principle of Sufficient Reason, examined what many philosophers
have recognized as an innate tendency to assume that in principle, the
universe is a thoroughly understandable place. His dissertation, in
effect, critically examined the disposition to assume that what is
real is what is rational. A century earlier, G.W. Leibniz (1646-1716)
famously defined the principle of this assumption -- the principle of
sufficient reason -- in his Monadology (1714), as that which
requires us to acknowledge that there is no fact or truth which lacks
a sufficient reason why it should be so, and not otherwise.

The principle of sufficient reason might seem to be non-controversial,
but it yields surprising and curious results. For example, we can
appeal to this principle to argue that there can be no two individuals
exactly alike, because there would otherwise be no sufficient reason
why one individual was in one place, while the other individual was in
another place. Moreover, if the principle of sufficient reason's
scope of applicability is assumed to be limitless, then there is a
definite answer to the question, “Why is there something, rather
than nothing?” Schopenhauer was keen to question the universal
extension of the principle of sufficient reason, mainly owing to his
advocacy of Kant's view that for the purposes of answering
metaphysical questions, human rationality lacks the power to transcend
human finitude, if only because human comprehension is limited by our
specific and narrowly-circumscribed capacities for organizing our
field of sensation.

Schopenhauer observed as an elementary matter, that to employ the
principle of sufficient reason, we must think about something in
particular that stands in need of explanation. This indicated to him,
that at the root of our epistemological situation, we must assume the
presence of a subject that thinks about some object to be explained.
From this, he concluded that the general root of the principle of
sufficient reason, is the distinction between subject and object that
we must presuppose as a condition for the very enterprise of looking
for explanations (The Fourfold Root, Section 16), and as a
condition for knowledge in general.

Schopenhauer's claim that the subject-object distinction is the most
general condition for human knowledge has its theoretical source in
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, for Kant similarly grounded
his own theory of knowledge upon a highly-abstracted, formalized, and
universalized subject-object distinction. Kant characterized the
subjective pole of the distinction as the contentless transcendental
unity of self-consciousness and the objective pole as the contentless
transcendental object that corresponds to the concept of an object in
general (CPR, A 109). The general root of the principle of
sufficient reason, as Schopenhauer characterizes it, is also the
general root of Kant's epistemology.

Following the demanding conceptions of knowledge typical of his time
that had been inherited from René Descartes (1596-1650),
Schopenhauer maintained that if any explanation is to be genuine, then
whatever is explained cannot be thought to have arisen by accident,
but must be regarded as having been necessary. Schopenhauer's
investigation into the principle of sufficient reason can thus be
alternatively characterized as an inquiry into the nature of the
various kinds of necessary connection that can arise
between different kinds of objects.

Inspired by Aristotle's doctrine of the four basic kinds of
explanatory reason or four [be]causes (Physics,
Book II, Chapter 3), Schopenhauer defined four kinds of necessary
connection that arise within the general context of seeking
explanations, and he correspondingly identified four independent kinds
of objects in reference to which explanations can be given:

Material things

Abstract concepts

Mathematical and Geometrical constructions

Psychologically-Motivating forces

Corresponding to these four kinds of objects, Schopenhauer linked four
different kinds of reasoning in a one-to-one correspondence. Within
his terminology, he associated material things with reasoning in terms
of cause and effect; abstract concepts with reasoning in terms of
logic; mathematical and geometrical constructions with reasoning in
reference to numbers and spaces; and motivating forces with reasoning
in reference to intentions, or what he called moral reasoning. In
sum, Schopenhauer identified the general root of the principle of
sufficient reason as the subject-object distinction, and the fourfold
root of the principle of sufficient reason as the specification of
four different kinds of objects for which we can seek explanations, in
association with the four independent intellectual paths along which
such explanations can be given, depending upon the different kinds of
objects involved.

One of Schopenhauer's most significant
conclusions is that the four different modes of explanation only run
in parallel with each other, and cannot coherently be intermixed. If
we begin by choosing a certain style of explanation, then we
immediately choose the kinds of objects to which we can
refer. Conversely, if we begin by choosing a certain kind of object to
explain, then we thereby choose a style of reasoning associated with
that kind of object. It thus violates the rationality of explanation
to confuse one kind of explanation with another kind of object. We
cannot begin with a style of explanation that involves material
objects and their associated cause-and-effect relationships, for
example, and then argue to a conclusion that involves a different kind
of object, such as abstract concepts. Likewise, we cannot begin with
abstract conceptual definitions and accordingly employ logical
reasoning, for the purposes of concluding our argumentation with
assertions about things that exist.

With this set of regulations about what counts as a legitimate way to
conduct explanations, Schopenhauer ruled out the often-cited and
(especially during his time) philosophically often-relied-upon
cosmological and ontological arguments for God's existence, and along
with them, all philosophies that ground themselves upon such
traditional arguments. Schopenhauer believed emphatically that the
German Idealist outlooks of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel rested upon
explanatory errors of this kind, and he regarded them -- often
bitingly -- as fundamentally wrongheaded styles of thought, because he
saw their philosophies as being specifically grounded upon versions of
the ontological argument for God's existence. His condemnation of
German Idealism was advanced in light of what he considered to be
sound philosophical reasons, despite his frequent rhetoric and
personal attacks on Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

In several ways, Schopenhauer can be called a Kantian, but
he did not always agree with the details of Kant's arguments. As
noted above, Schopenhauer's teacher in Göttingen was
G. E. Schulze, who authored in 1792, a text entitled
Aenesidemus, which contained a criticism of the Kantian
philosopher, Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757-1823). Reinhold himself was
a defender of Kant, and was known for his Philosophy of the
Elements (Elementarphilosophie) which was
expressed, along with some earlier writings, in Reinhold's 1791 work,
The Foundation of Philosophical Knowledge (Fundament des
philosophischen Wissens).

Schulze's critique of Kant boils down to the following: it is
incoherent to posit as a matter of philosophical knowledge -- as Kant
seems to have done -- a mind-independent object that is beyond all
human experience, and which serves as the objective cause of our
experience. Schulze argues that this position illegitimately uses the
concept of causality to conclude as a matter of strong epistemological
requirement, and not merely as a matter of rational speculation, that
there is some object -- namely, the thing-in-itself -- outside of all
possible human experience, that is nonetheless the cause of our
sensations.

Schopenhauer concurs that hypothesizing a thing-in-itself as the cause
of our sensations amounts to a constitutive application and projection
of the concept of causality beyond its legitimate scope, for according
to Kant himself, the concept of causality only supplies knowledge when
it is applied within the field of possible experience, and not outside
of it. Schopenhauer therefore denies that our sensations have an
external cause, in the specific sense that we can know there is some
epistemologically inaccessible object -- the thing-in-itself -- that
exists independently of our sensations and is the cause of them.

These internal problems with Kant's argument suggest to Schopenhauer
that Kant's reference to the thing-in-itself as a transcendental
object (or, for that matter, as an object of any kind) is misleading.
Instead, Schopenhauer maintains that if we are to refer to the
thing-in-itself, then we must come to an awareness of it, not by
invoking the relationship of causality -- a relationship where the
cause and the effect are logically understood to designate different
objects or events (since self-causation is a contradiction in terms)
-- but through another means altogether. As we will see in the next
section, and as we can see immediately in the very title of his main
work -- The World as Will and Representation -- Schopenhauer
believes that the world has a double-aspect, namely, as will
(Wille) and as representation (Vorstellung).

Schopenhauer does not believe, then, that the will causes our
representations. His position is that will and representations are
one and the same reality, regarded from different perspectives. They
stand in relationship to each other, in a way that is more akin to the
relationship between a force and its manifestation (e.g., as
exemplfied in the relationship between electricity and a spark) as
opposed to the relationship between cause and effect. Rather than say
that the thing-in-itself causes our sensations, as if we were
referring to one domino striking another domino, Schopenhauer
maintains that the relationship between the thing-in-itself and our
sensations is more like that between two sides of a coin, neither of
which causes the other, and both of which are of the same coin and
coinage.

Among his other criticisms of Kant (see Schopenhauer's appendix to the
first volume of The World as Will and Representation,
entitled, “Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy”),
Schopenhauer also maintains that Kant's twelve categories of the human
understanding -- the various categories through which we logically
organize our field of sensations into comprehensible individual
objects -- are reducible to the single category of causality, and that
this category, along with the intuitive forms of space and time, is
sufficient to explain the basic format of all human experience, viz.,
individual objects dispersed throughout space and time, causally
related to one another.

Schopenhauer further comprehends these three (and for him,
interdependent) principles as expressions of a single principle,
namely, the principle of sufficient reason, whose fourfold root he had
examined in his doctoral dissertation. In The World as Will and
Representation, Schopenhauer often refers to the principle of
sufficient reason as the principle of individuation, thereby linking
the idea of individuation with rationality, necessity, systematicity
and determinism, and using the two characterizations as a shorthand
expression for what Kant had more complexly referred to as space, time
and the twelve categories of the understanding (viz., unity,
plurality, totality, reality, negation, limitation, substance,
causality, reciprocity, possibility, actuality [Dasein], and
necessity).

It is a perennial philosophical reflection, that if one looks deeply
into oneself, one will discover not only one's own essence, but will
also discover the essence of the universe as a whole. For as one is a
part of the universe like everything else, the basic energies of the
universe flow through oneself, as they flow through everything else.
So it is thought that one can come into contact with the nature of the
universe, if one comes into contact with one's own nature.

Among the most frequently-identified principles that is
introspectively brought forth -- and one that was the standard for
German Idealist philosophers such as Fichte, Schelling and Hegel who
were philosophizing within the Cartesian tradition -- is the principle
of self-consciousness. With the belief that acts of
self-consciousness exemplify a self-creative process akin to divine
creation itself, and developing a logic that reflected the structure
of self-consciousness, namely, the dialectical logic of position,
opposition and reconciliation, the German Idealists maintained that
dialectical logic mirrors the structure not only of human productions,
both individual and social, but the structure of reality as a
whole.

As much as he opposes the traditional German Idealists in their
metaphysical celebration of self-consciousness, Schopenhauer stands
within the spirit of this tradition, for he believes that the ultimate
principle of the universe is likewise apprehensible through
introspection, and that we can philosophically understand the world as
various manifestations of this general principle. For Schopenhauer,
however, this is not the principle of self-consciousness and
rationally-infused will, but rather, what he calls simply
“will” -- a mindless, aimless, non-rational urge at the
foundation of all of our instinctual drives, and at the foundational
being of everything. Schopenhauer's originality does not reside in
his characterization of the world as will, or as act -- for we
encounter this position in Fichte's philosophy as well -- but in
Schopenhauer's conception of the will as being utterly devoid of
rationality.

Having rejected the Kantian position that our sensations are caused by
an unknowable object that exists independently of us, Schopenhauer
notes importantly that our body -- which is just one among the many
objects in the world -- is given to us in two different ways: we
perceive our body as a physical object among other physical objects,
subject to the natural laws that govern the movements of all physical
objects, and we are aware of our body through our immediate awareness,
as we each consciously inhabit our body, intentionally moving it,
feeling directly our pleasures, pains, and emotional states. We can
objectively perceive our hand as an external object, as a surgeon
might perceive it during a medical operation, and we can also be
subjectively aware of our hand as something we inhabit, as something
we can willfully move, and of which we can feel its inner muscular
workings.

From this observation, Schopenhauer asserts that our body is given in
two entirely different ways, namely, as representation (i.e.,
objectively; externally) and as will (i.e., subjectively; internally).
One of his intriguing conclusions is that when we move our hand, this
is not to be comprehended as a motivational act that first happens,
and then causes the movement of our hand as an effect. Rather,
Schopenhauer maintains that the movement of our hand is but a single
act -- again, like the two sides of a coin -- that has a subjective
feeling of willing as one of its aspects, and the movement of the hand
as the other of its aspects. He states in general that the action of
the body is nothing but the act of will objectified, that is,
translated into perception.

At this point in his argumentation, Schopenhauer has established only
that among his thousands upon thousands of ideas, or representations,
only one of them (viz., the [complex] representation of his body) has
this special double-aspected quality. When he perceives the moon, or
a mountain, he does not have any direct access to the metaphysical
inside of these objects; they remain as representations that reveal to
him only their objective side. Schopenhauer asks, though, how he
might understand the world as an integrated whole, or how he might
render it more comprehensible, for as things stand, he can directly
experience the inside of one of his representations, but of no others.
To answer this question, Schopenhauer takes a philosophical leap, and
uses the double-knowledge of his own body as the key to the inner
being of every other natural phenomenon. He consequently regards
every object in the world as being double-aspected, and as having an
inside or inner aspect of its own, just as his consciousness is the
inner aspect of his own body. For such reasons, Schopenhauer flatly
rejects Descartes's causal interactionism, where thinking substance is
said to cause changes in a metaphysically independent material
substance and vice-versa.

This precipitates a position that characterizes the inner aspect of
things, as far as we can describe it, as will, and ultimately, as a
dimension of the thing-in-itself, which in his critique of Kant,
Schopenhauer had argued also has a double-aspected relationship to our
sensory experience. Hence, Schopenhauer regards the world as a whole
as having two sides: the world is will and the world is
representation. The world as will (for us) is the world as it is in
itself, and the world as representation is the world of appearances,
of our ideas, or objects. An alternative title for Schopenhauer's
main book, The World as Will and Representation, might well
have been, The World as Realityand Appearance.
Similarly, his book might have been entitled, The Inner and Outer
Nature of the World, or perhaps, The World as Subject and as
Object.

An inspiration for Schopenhauer's view that ideas are like inert
objects is George Berkeley (1685-1753), who describes ideas in this
despiritualized way in his A Treatise Concerning the Principles of
Human Knowledge (1710) [Section 25]. A primary inspiration for
Schopenhauer's double-aspect view of the universe is Baruch Spinoza
(1632-1677), who developed a similarly-structured metaphysics, and who
Schopenhauer had studied in his early years before writing his
dissertation. A subsequent, but crucial, inspiration is from the
classical Upanishadic writings of India (c. 900-600 BCE) which also
express the view that the universe is double-aspected, having
objective and subjective dimensions that are referred to respectively
as Brahman and Atman.

After completing his dissertation, Schopenhauer was exposed to
Upanishadic thought in 1813 by the orientalist Friedrich Majer
(1771-1818), who visited Johanna Schopenhauer's salon in Weimar. Even
more importantly, Schopenhauer's appreciation for Upanishadic thought
was augmented in Dresden during his writing of The World as Will
and Representation by Karl Friedrich Christian Krause,
Schopenhauer's 1815-1817 neighbor. Krause was not only a metaphysical
panentheist (see biographic segment above); he was also an enthusiast
of South Asian thought. Familiar with the Sanskrit language, he
introduced Schopenhauer to both meditative techniques and to
publications on India in the Asiatisches Magazin. It was
during this time that Schopenhauer was able to study the first
European-language translation of the Upanishads, for in 1804, a
Persian version of the Upanishads (the Oupnekhat) was rendered into
Latin by the French Orientalist, Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron
(1731-1805) -- a scholar who was also responsible for introducing
translations of Zoroastrian texts into Europe in 1771.

Despite its general precedents within the philosophical family of
double-aspect theories, Schopenhauer's particular characterization of
the world as will, is nonetheless novel and daring. It is also
frightening and pandemonic: he maintains that the world as it is in
itself (sometimes he crucially adds, “for us”) is an endless
striving and blind impulse with no end in view, devoid of knowledge,
lawless, absolutely free, entirely self-determining and almighty.
Within Schopenhauer's vision of the world as will, there is no God to
be comprehended, and the world is conceived of as being utterly
meaningless. When anthropomorphically considered, the world is
represented as being in a condition of eternal frustration, as it
endlessly strives for nothing in particular, and as it goes
essentially nowhere. It is a world far beyond any ascriptions of good
and evil.

In its essential meaninglessness, Schopenhauer's characterization of
the world differs from the views of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, all
of whom fostered some distinct hope that everything is moving towards
a harmonious and just end. But like these German Idealists,
Schopenhauer also tries to explain how the world that we experience
daily, is the result of the activity of the central principle of
things. As the German Idealists tried to account for the great chain
of being -- the rocks, trees, animals, and human beings -- as the
increasingly complicated and detailed expressions of
self-consciousness, Schopenhauer attempts to do the same with respect
to explaining the world in terms of will, albeit through
the human lens.

For Schopenhauer, the world that we experience is constituted by
various objectifications of the will that correspond first, to the
general root of the principle of sufficient reason, and second, to the
more specific fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason.
This generates initially, a basic two-tiered outlook (viz., will
vs. objects-in-general [i.e., reality vs. appearance]) that is
articulated into a three-tiered outlook (viz., will -- timeless,
universal objects -- spatio-temporal objects [reality -- appearance,
universal level -- appearance, individuated level]), by further
distinguishing between two levels of appearance that correspond to two
kinds of objects.

The general philosophical pattern of a single world-essence that
initially manifests itself as a multiplicity of abstract essences,
which, in turn, manifest themselves as a multiplicity of physical
individuals can be found throughout the world. For instance, it is
characteristic of Neoplatonism (c. third century, C.E., as
represented by Plotinus [204-270]), and it also characteristic of the
Buddhist Three Body Doctrine [trikaya] of the Buddha's
manifestation which originated in the Yogacara school of Mahayana
Buddhism as represented by Maitreya (270-350), Asanga (375-430) and
Vasubandu (400-480).

According to Schopenhauer, corresponding to the level of the universal
subject-object distinction, the will is objectified first into a set
of universal objects or Platonic Ideas which constitute the timeless
patterns for each of the individual things that we experience in space
and time. There are different Platonic Ideas, and although this
multiplicity of Ideas implies that some measure of individuation is
present within this realm, each Idea nonetheless contains no plurality
within itself and is said to be “one.” The Platonic Ideas
are in neither space nor time, and they therefore lack the qualities
of individuation that would follow from the introduction of spatial
and temporal qualifications. So in these respects, the Platonic Ideas
are independent of the specific fourfold root of the principle of
sufficient reason, even though it would be misleading to say that
there is no individuation whatsoever at this universal level, because
there are many different Platonic Ideas, and these are externally
individuated from one another. Schopenhauer refers to the Platonic
Ideas as the direct objectifications of the will, and as the immediate
objectivity of the will.

The will's indirect objectifications appear when we
continue to specify the application of the principle of sufficient
reason beyond its general root, and introduce the forms of
time, space and causality, not to mention logic, mathematics, geometry
and moral reasoning. When the will is objectified at this level of
determination, we have emerge as a result, the world of everyday life,
whose objects are, in effect, kaleidoscopically multiplied
manifestations of the Platonic forms, endlessly dispersed through
space and time.

Since the principle of sufficient reason is -- given Schopenhauer's
inspiration from Kant -- the epistemological form of the human mind
itself, the spatio-temporal world is the world of our own
objectification. The world's spatio-temporal appearance is a
reflection of the epistemological form of our own mind, and to that
extent, as Schopenhauer says, life is like a dream. As a condition of
our knowledge, Schopenhauer believes that the laws of nature, along
with the sets of objects that we experience, we ourselves create in
way that is not unlike the way the constitution of our tongues invokes
the taste of sugar. For if ears tongues and noses were removed from
the world, as Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) states in “The
Assayer” (1623), then odors tastes and sounds would be removed as
well.

At this point, what Schopenhauer has developed philosophically is
surely interesting, but we have not yet mentioned its particularly
remarkable and memorable aspect. If we combine his claim that the
world is will with his Kantian view that we are responsible for the
individuated world of appearances, we arrive at an exceptionally novel
outlook -- an outlook that depends heavily upon Schopenhauer's
characterization of the thing-in-itself as will, understood to be an
aimless, blind striving.

Before the human being comes onto the scene with its principle of
sufficient reason (or principle of individuation) there are no
individuals. It is the human being that, in its very effort to know
anything, objectifies an appearance for itself that involves the
fragmentation of the will and its breakup into a comprehensible set of
individuals. The implication of this fragmentation, given the nature
of the will, is terrible: the result of the epistemological
fragmentation is a world of constant struggle, where each individual thing
strives against every other individual thing; the result is a
permanent “war of all against all” akin to what Thomas
Hobbes (1588-1679) characterized as the state of nature.

Kant concludes in the Critique of Pure Reason that we create
the laws of nature (CPR, A125); similarly, Schopenhauer
concludes in The World as Will and Representation that we
create the violent state of nature, for he maintains that the
individuation that the human being imposes upon things, is imposed
upon a blind striving energy that, once it becomes individuated and
objectified, turns against itself, consumes itself, and does violence
to itself. His paradigm image is of the bulldog-ant of Australia,
which when cut in half, struggles in a battle to the death between its
head and tail. Our very quest for scientific and practical knowledge
creates a world that feasts upon itself.

Hence derives Schopenhauer's renowned pessimism: he claims
that as individuals, we are the unfortunate products of our own
epistemological making, and that within the world of appearances that
we ourselves structure, we are forever doomed to fight with other
individuals, and to want more than we can ever have. On
Schopenhauer's view, the world of daily life is essentially violent
and frustrating; it is a world that, as long as our consciousness
remains at that level where the principle of sufficient reason applies
in its fourfold root, will never resolve itself into a condition of
greater tranquillity. As he explicitly states, daily life “is
suffering” (WWR, Section 56) and to express this, he
employs images of frustration taken from classical Greek mythology,
such as those of Tantalus and the Danaids, along with the suffering of
Ixion on the ever-spinning wheel of fire.

Schopenhauer's violence-filled vision of the daily world leads him on
a quest for tranquillity, and he pursues this end by retracing the
path through which the will is objectified. Schopenhauer discovers
more peaceful states of mind by directing his everyday,
practically-oriented consciousness towards more extraordinary,
universal and less-individuated states of mind, since he believes that
the violence that a person experiences, is proportional to the degree
to which that person's consciousness is individuated and objectifying.
He believes that with less individuation and objectification, there is
less conflict, less pain and more peace.

One way to achieve a more tranquil state of consciousness, according
to Schopenhauer, is through aesthetic perception. This is a special
state of perceptual consciousness, where we apprehend some
spatio-temporal object and discern through this object, the Platonic
Idea that corresponds to the type of object in question. In this
special form of perception, Schopenhauer maintains, we lose ourselves
in the object, we forget about our individuality, and we become the
clear mirror of the object. For example, through the aesthetic
perception of an individual tree, we perceive shining through it, the
archetype of all trees (i.e., the Ur-phenomenon, as Goethe would
describe it).

Since Schopenhauer assumes that the quality of the subject of
experience must correspond to the quality of the object of experience,
he infers that in the state of aesthetic perception, where the objects
are universal, the subject of experience must likewise become
universal (WWR, Section 33). Aesthetic perception thus
raises a person into a pure will-less, painless, and timeless subject
of knowledge (WWR, Section 34).

In Schopenhauer's opinion, few people have the capacity to remain for
long in such an aesthetic state of mind, and most people are denied
the transcendent tranquillity of aesthetic perception. Only the
artistic genius has the capacity to remain in the state of pure
perception, and it is to these individuals that we must turn -- as we
appreciate their works of art -- in order to obtain a more
concentrated and knowledgeable glimpse of the world of Platonic Ideas.
The artistic genius contemplates the Platonic Ideas, creates a work of
art that portrays these Ideas in a fashion more clear and accessible
than is usual, and thereby communicates the vision of the Platonic
Ideas to those who do not have the idealizing power to see through,
and to rise above, the ordinary world of spatio-temporal objects.

Schopenhauer states that the purpose of art is the communication of
Platonic Ideas (WWR, Section 50). As constituting art, he
has in mind the traditional five fine arts minus music, namely,
architecture, sculpture, painting, and poetry. These four arts he
comprehends in relation to the Platonic Ideas -- those universal
objects of aesthetic awareness that are located at the objective pole
of the universal subject-object distinction that is general root of
the principle of sufficient reason. Schopenhauer's account of the
visual and literary arts corresponds to the world as representation in
its immediate objectification, namely, the field of Platonic Ideas as
opposed to the field of spatio-temporal objects.

With respect to music, Schopenhauer develops as a counterpart to his
interpretation of the visual and literary arts, an account that
coordinates music with the subjective pole of the universal
subject-object distinction. His account of music corresponds to the
world as will in its immediate objectification. Separate from the
other traditional arts, Schopenhauer maintains that music is the
highest art, and is on a par with the Platonic Ideas themselves,
insofar as music is also an immediate objectification of the will.
Just as the Platonic Ideas contain the patterns for the types of
objects in the daily world, the field of music formally duplicates the
basic structure of the world: the bass notes are analogous to
inorganic nature, the harmonies are analogous to the animal world, and
the melodies are analogous to the human world. And just as the
sounding of the bass notes produces more subtle sonic structures in
the overtones, animate life arises from inanimate nature.

In short, Schopenhauer discerns in the structure of music, a series of
analogies to the structure of the physical world that allow him to
claim that music is a copy of the will itself. Schopenhauer's view
might seem extravagant upon first hearing, but underlying it is the
insight that if one is to discern the truth of the world, it might be
advantageous to apprehend the world, not exclusively in scientific,
mechanical and causal terms, but rather in aesthetic, analogical,
expressive and metaphorical terms that require a sense of taste for
their discernment. And if the form of the world is best reflected in
the form of music, then the most philosophical sensibility will be a
musical sensibility. This partially explains the positive attraction
of Schopenhauer's theory of music to thinkers such as Richard Wagner
and Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom were philosopher-musician
types.

With respect to the theme of achieving more peaceful and transcendent
states of mind, Schopenhauer believes that music achieves this end by
embodying the abstract forms of feelings, or feelings abstracted from
their particular everyday circumstances. This allows us to perceive
the quintessence of emotional life, without the contents that would
typically cause suffering. By expressing emotion in this detached or
disinterested way, music allows us to apprehend the nature of the
world without the frustration involved in daily life, and hence, in a
mode of aesthetic awareness that is akin to the tranquil philosophical
contemplation of the world.

As many medieval Christians once assumed, Schopenhauer believes that
the desires of the flesh are to be avoided, and that moral awareness
arises through a state of mind that transcends our bodily
individuality. Indeed, Schopenhauer states explicitly that his views
on morality are entirely in the spirit of Christianity, not to mention
that of the doctrines and ethical precepts of the sacred books of
India (WWR, Section 68). Among the precepts Schopenhauer
respects, are those prescribing that one treat others as kindly as one
treats oneself, that one refrain from violence and take measures to
reduce suffering in the world, that one avoid egoism and thoughts
directed towards revenge, and that one cultivate a strong sense of
compassion. Such precepts are not unique to Christianity;
Schopenhauer believes that they form the basis of most
religiously-grounded moral views. Far from being an immoralistic,
Schopenhauer's moral theory is written in the same vein as those of
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), both of
whom also advocated principles that were in general accord with
Christian precepts.

Schopenhauer's conception of moral awareness is consistent with his
overall project of seeking more tranquil, transcendent states of mind.
Within the moral realm specifically, this quest for transcendence
leads Schopenhauer to maintain that once we recognize each human as
being merely an instance and aspect of the single act of will that is
humanity itself, we will appreciate that the difference between the
tormentor and the tormented is illusory, and that in fact, it is the
very same eye of humanity that looks out from each and every person.
For Schopenhauer, according to the true nature of things, each person
has all the sufferings of the world as his or her own, for it is the
same inner human nature that ultimately bears all of the pain and all
of the guilt. Thus, with the consciousness of humanity in mind, a
moral consciousness would necessarily take upon himself or herself,
the sins of the whole world (WWR, Sections 63 and 64).

So not only does the specific application of the principle of
sufficient reason fragment the world into a set of individuals
dispersed through space and time for the purposes of attaining
scientific knowledge, this rationalistic principle generates the
illusion that when one person does wrong to another, that these two
people are essentially separate and private individuals. Just as the
fragmentation of the world into individuals is necessary to apply the
relationship of causality, where A causes B
and where A and B are conceived to be two
independent objects, this same fragmentation leads us to conceive of
the relationships between people on a model where some person
P acts upon person Q, where P and
Q are conceived as two independent individuals. The
conditions for scientific knowledge have a negative moral impact,
because they lead us to regard each other as individuals separate and
alien to one another.

By compassionately recognizing at a more universal level, that the
inner nature of another person is of the same substance as oneself,
one arrives at a moral outlook. This compassionate way of
apprehending another person is not merely understanding abstractly the
proposition that “each person is a human being,” or
understanding abstractly (as would Kant) that, in principle, the same
regulations of rationality operate equally in each of us and oblige us
accordingly. It is to feel directly the concrete life of another
person; it is to enter into the life of humanity imaginatively, such
as to coincide with all others as much as one possibly can. It is to
imagine equally, and in full force, what it is like to be
both a cruel tormentor and a tormented victim, and to locate both
opposing experiences and characters within a single, universal
consciousness that is the consciousness of humanity itself. With the
development of moral consciousness, one expands one's consciousness
towards the mixed-up, tension-ridden, bittersweet, tragicomic,
multi-aspected and distinctively sublime consciousness of humanity
itself.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) characterized the sublime as a sense of
tranquillity tinged with terror, and Schopenhauer's moral
consciousness fits such a description. Just as music embodies the
emotional tensions within the world in an abstracted and distanced
manner, and thus affords a measure of tranquillity by presenting a
softened, sonic image of the daily world of universal conflict, moral
consciousness is also attended by a measure of tranquillity. When
attaining the universal consciousness of humanity itself that
transcends spatial and temporal determinations, the desires that
derive their significance from one's personal condition as a
spatio-temporal individual are seen for what they are, as being
grounded upon the illusion of fragmentation, and they thereby lose
much their compelling force. In this respect, moral consciousness
becomes the “quieter” of the will, despite its first-person
recognition of human torment. Works of art that portray this kind of
sublime consciousness would include the Laocoön (c. 25
B.C.E.) and Hieronymous Bosch's painting, Christ Carrying the
Cross (c. 1515).

Negatively considered, moral consciousness delivers us from the
unquenchable thirst that is individuated human life, along with its
incessant oscillation between pain and boredom. Positively
considered, moral consciousness generates a measure of wisdom, as
one's outlook becomes akin to a universal novel that contains the
templates for all of the human stories which have been repeating
themselves generation after generation -- stories comic and tragic,
pathetic and triumphant, and trivial and monumental. One becomes like
the steadfast tree, whose generations of leaves fall away with each
passing season, as does generation after generation of people (Homer,
Iliad, Book VI).

In a similar connection, Schopenhauer maintains in his “Essay on
the Freedom of the Will” (1839) that everything that happens,
happens necessarily. Having accepted Kant's view that cause and
effect relationships extend throughout the world of experience, he
believes that every individual act is determined by prior causes or
motives. This fatalistic realization is a source of comfort and
tranquillity for Schopenhauer, for upon becoming aware that nothing
can be done to alter the course of events, he finds that the struggle
to change the world quickly loses its force (see also WWR,
Section 56).

Schopenhauer emphatically denies the common conception that being free
entails that we could always have done otherwise than what we have
chosen to do. He augments this denial, however, with the claim that
each of us is free in a higher sense. Noting that we have “an
unshakeable certainty that we are the doers of our deeds”
(“Essay on the Freedom of the Will”, Conclusion), he
maintains that one's sense of responsibility reveals an innate
character that is self-determining and independent of experience.
Just as individual trees and individual flowers are the multifarious
expressions of the Platonic Ideas of tree and flower, each and every
one of a person's individual actions is the spatio-temporal
manifestation of that person's respective innate or intelligible
character.

A person's intelligible character is a timeless act of will that the
person essentially is, and it can be conceived of as the subjective
aspect of the Platonic Idea that would objectively define the person's
inner essence (WWR, Section 28), as a portrait artist might
perceive it. This concept of the intelligible character is Kantian
(Critique of Pure Reason, A539/B567), and in conjunction with
Kant's correlated concept of an empirical character (i.e., the
intelligible character as it is experientially expressed) Schopenhauer
regards it as a means to resolve the problem of freedom and
determinism, and to be one of the most profound ideas in Kant's whole
philosophy.

From the standpoint of later philosophical influence, Schopenhauer's
discussion of the intelligible character resonates with Friedrich
Nietzsche's famous injunction to “become what one is”
(Ecce Homo, “Why I am so Clever”, Section 9).
Schopenhauer believes that as we learn more about ourselves, we can
manifest our intelligible character more effectively, and can thereby
play our designated role “artistically and methodically, with
firmness and grace.” With self-knowledge, we can transform our
lives into works of art, as Nietzsche prescribed.

Character development thus involves expanding the knowledge of one's
innate individuality, and a primary effect of this knowledge and
self-realization is greater peace of mind (WWR, Section 55).
Moreover, since one's intelligible character is both subjective and
universal, its status coordinates with that of music, the highest art.
This association with music -- as Nietzsche probably observed --
reveals a systematic link between Schopenhauer's aesthetics and moral
theory, and it can account for Schopenhauer's reference to the
emergence of pleasing aesthetic and artistic, if not musical,
qualities in connection with the expression of one's acquired
character.

According to Schopenhauer, aesthetic perception offers only a short-lived
transcendence from the daily world. And moral awareness, despite its
comparative tranquillity in contrast to the daily world of violence,
is not the ultimate state of mind. Schopenhauer believes that a
person who experiences the truth of human nature from a moral
perspective -- who appreciates how its spatial and temporal forms of
knowledge generate a constant passing away, continual suffering, vain
striving and inner tension -- will be so profoundly repulsed by the
human condition, that he or she will lose the desire to affirm the
objectified human scene in any of its manifestations. The result is
an attitude of the denial of the will-to-live, which
Schopenhauer identifies with an ascetic attitude of renunciation,
resignation, and willessness, but also composure and tranquillity. In a
manner reminiscent of traditional Buddhism, Schopenhauer recognizes
that life is filled with unavoidable frustration, and he acknowledges
that the suffering caused by this frustration can itself be reduced by
minimizing one's desires. Moral consciousness and virtue thus give
way to the voluntary poverty and chastity of the ascetic. St. Francis
of Assisi (WWR, Section 68) and Jesus (WWR, Section
70) emerge, accordingly, as Schopenhauer's prototypes for the most
enlightened lifestyle, as do the ascetics from every religious
tradition.

With his elevation of the ascetic consciousness and its associated
detachment and tranquillity, some paradox enters into Schopenhauer's
outlook. For he acknowledges that the denial of one's will-to-live
entails a terrible struggle with one's instinctual energies, as one
avoids the temptations of bodily pleasures and resists the mere animal
force to endure and flourish. So before one can enter the
transcendent consciousness of heavenly tranquillity, one must pass
through the fires of hell and experience a dark night of the soul, as
one's universal self fights against one's individuated and physical
self, as pure knowledge struggles against animalistic
will, and as freedom struggles against nature.

A tension within Schopenhauer's view arises in light of the following.
One can superficially maintain that no contradiction is involved in
the act of struggling (i.e., willing) to deny one's will-to-live,
because one is not saying that the will is somehow destroying itself,
but only saying that a more universal manifestation of the will is
overpowering a less universal manifestation of the will, namely, the
natural, individuated, physically-embodied aspect. But it remains that
within this opposition, the will as a whole is nonetheless set against
itself according to the very the model that Schopenhauer is trying to
transcend, namely, the model wherein one aspect of the will fights
against another aspect, like the divided bulldog ant. This in itself
is not a problem, but the location of the tormented and
self-crucifying ascetic consciousness at the penultimate level of
enlightenment is theoretically disturbing, owing to its high degree of
inner ferocity. Even though this ferocity occurs at a reflective and
introspective level, we nonetheless have before us a spiritualized
life-and-death struggle within the ascetic consciousness.

This peculiarity notwithstanding, the ascetic's struggle is none other
than a supreme struggle against human nature. It is a struggle
against the close-to-unavoidable tendency to apply the principle of
sufficient reason for the purpose of attaning practical knowledge --
an application which has for Schopenhauer, the utterly repulsive
side-effect of creating the illusion of a world permeated with endless
conflict. From a related angle, the ascetic's struggle is a struggle
against the forces of violence and evil, which, owing to
Schopenhauer's acceptance and interpretation of Kant's epistemology,
locate these forces significantly within human nature itself. When
the ascetic transcends human nature, the ascetic resolves the problem
of evil: by removing the individuated and individuating human
consciousness from the scene, one removes the entire spatio-temporal
scene upon which daily violence occurs.

In a way, then, the ascetic consciousness can be said symbolically to
return Adam and Eve to Paradise, for it is the very quest for
knowledge (i.e., the will to apply the principle of individuation to
experience) that the ascetic overcomes. This amounts to a
self-overcoming at the universal level, where not only physical
desires are overcome, but where humanly-inherent epistemological
dispositions are also overcome.

At the very end of the first volume of The World as Will and
Representation (1818), Schopenhauer intimates that the ascetic
experiences a mystical state of consciousness whose character is
inscrutable -- and looks like nothing at all -- from the standpoint of
ordinary, day-to-day, individuated and objectifying consciousness. He
adds, conversely, that from the standpoint of an ascetic, mystical
consciousness where only knowledge remains and where
“the will [to live] has vanished,” that the physical world,
with all of its suns and galaxies “is -- nothing.”
Schopenhauer also states that this mystical consciousness has an
ocean-like calmness, tranquillity, confidence and serenity
(WWR, Section 71). On top of this, he adds that if one were
to ask for a positive characterization of the mystical state, we could
refer loosely to words and phrases such as ecstasy, rapture,
illumination and “union with God.” Schopenhauer
recognizes a positive content to the ascetic's mystical experience,
although he considers the experience to be ineffable.

Schopenhauer's advocacy of mystical experience presents us with a
puzzle: if everything is will without
qualification, then where are we to locate the will-less mystical
state of mind? According to Schopenhauer's three-tiered philosophical
schema, it must be located either at the level of the will as it is in
itself, or at the level of Platonic Ideas, or at the level of
individual things in space and time. It cannot be the latter, because
individuated consciousness is the everyday consciousness of desire,
frustration and suffering. Neither can it be located at the level of
the will as it is in itself, because the will is a blind striving,
without knowledge, and without satisfaction.

The ascetic consciousness might be most plausibly located at the level
of the universal subject-object distinction, akin to the music-filled
consciousness, but Schopenhauer states explicitly states that the
mystical consciousness abolishes not only time and space, but also the
fundamental forms of subject and object. He states, “no will: no
representation, no world” (WWR, Section 71). So in
terms of its degree of generality, the mystical state of mind seems to
be located at a level of universality comparable to that of the will
as thing-in-itself. But it is defined clearly as not being a
manifestation of the will, and therefore appears to be keyed into
another dimension altogether, in total disconnection from the will as
thing-in-itself. Which is to say that if the thing-in-itself is
exactly congruent with will, then there is no place for the mystical
consciousness within Schopenhauer's three-tiered philosophical schema
of reality.

In the second volume of The World as Will and Representation
(1844), published twenty-six years after the first volume,
Schopenhauer addresses the above complication, and he explicitly
qualifies his claim that the thing-in-itself is will. He states in
the later work, that it is only “to us” that the
thing-in-itself appears as will and that it remains possible that the
thing-in-itself has other modes of being that are incomprehensible in
ordinary terms, but which might be accessible to mystical
consciousness (WWR, II, Chapter XVIII, “On the
Possibility of Knowing the Thing-in-Itself”). He concludes that
mystical experience is only a relative nothingness, namely, when it is
considered from the standpoint of the daily world, but that it is not
an absolute nothingness, as would be the case if the thing-in-itself
were will in an unconditional sense, and not merely will to us.

Schopenhauer's considered position is that the thing-in-itself is
multidimensional, and although the thing-in-itself is not wholly
identical to the world as will, it nonetheless includes as its
manifestations, the world as will and the world as
representation. Hence the underlying panentheistic structure to
Schopenhauer's view (noted earlier in the views of K.C.F. Krause).
From a scholarly standpoint, this implies that interpretations of
Schopenhauer that portray him as a Kantian who believes that knowledge
of the thing-in-itself is impossible, along with interpretations of
Schopenhauer that portray him as a traditional metaphysician who
claims that the thing-in-itself is straightforwardly, wholly and
unconditionally will, inaccurately represent Schopenhauer's
outlook.

In the first volume and first edition of The World as Will and
Representation (1819), we find Schopenhauer stating at one point
that the thing-in-itself “to us” is will (WWR,
Section, 31), and at other points stating simply that the
thing-in-itself “is” will, without relativizing it to the
human perspective (WWR, Sections 22 and 23). Most
frequently, he uses the ambiguous phrase “the will as
thing-in-itself”(“der Wille als Ding an
sich”). So there is an indeterminacy about what position
Schopenhauer adopted in the first volume. However, as noted, in the
second volume (1844) he states explicitly that the thing-in-itself can
have many dimensions, not all of which are captured by the term
“will.” If we add to these considerations, that while
Schopenhauer was in Dresden writing The World as Will and
Representation, he lived for two years next to the theorist of
panentheism, K.C.F. Krause, a stronger case can be made that with
respect to the conception of the thing-in-itself, Schopenhauer
consistently adopted a multidimensional, panentheist-inspired and
Upanishads-inspired outlook from the start.

Schopenhauer's view that the will is thing-in-itself only to
us, thus provides a philosophical space for him to assert
consistently that mystical experience provides a positive insight. It
also relativizes to the human condition, Schopenhauer's famous
position that the world is will. This implies that his
outlook on daily life as a cruel and violence-filled world -- a world
generated by the application of the principle of sufficient reason, is
based on a human-conditioned intuition, namely, the direct,
double-knowledge of one's body as both subject and object. So in
actuality, Schopenhauer's pessimistic vision of the world is itself
grounded upon the subject-object distinction, i.e., the general root
of the principle of sufficient reason. As mentioned above, we can see
this fundamental reliance upon the subject-object distinction
reflected in the very title of his book, The World as Will and
Representation, which can be read as, in effect, The World as
Subjectively and Objectively Apprehended.

This observation does not render (within the parameters of his
outlook) Schopenhauer's ruthlessly competitive world-scenario
typically any less avoidable, but it does lead us to understand
Schopenhauer's pessimistic vision of the world-as-will, as less of an
outlook derived from an absolute standpoint that transcends human
nature, and as more of an outlook expressive of human nature in its
effort to achieve philosophical understanding. Owing to its
fundamental reliance upon the subject-object distinction,
Schopenhauer's classical account of the daily world as the
objectification of the will, should not therefore be understood as a
traditional metaphysical theory which purports to describe the
unconditional truth. It should rather be understood as an expression
of the human perspective on the world, which, as an embodied
individual, we typically cannot avoid. It expresses only a
perspective on the world, but to the degree that the subject-object
distinction is epistemologically and practically unavoidable, it is a
necessary one.

Rather than rendering Schopenhauer's philosophy more problematic, his
later clarification renders it more systematic. For in his first
volume, he emphasizes how our awareness of the thing-in-itself as will
is conditioned by our bodily awareness, which is necessarily in time.
In his second volume, he explains how our awareness of the
thing-in-itself as will is conditioned, not only by our bodily
awareness, but also by our epistemological condition, which requires
the employment of the subject-object distinction. In effect, as his
philosophy matures, Schopenhauer develops a dual-qualification to the
absolute (i.e., higher-dimensional) knowledge of the thing-in-itself,
expressed in reference to the theoretical (i.e., in relation to
epistemological theory) and practical (i.e., in relation to the
situated human body) aspects of the principle of sufficient
reason.

As noted above, this does not imply that with respect to the question
of whether higher-dimensional knowledge of the thing-in-itself is
possible, Schopenhauer became more Kantian as he grew older. For
unlike Kant, it appears that Schopenhauer always believed that such
knowledge of the thing-in-itself is possible. Throughout his
philosophical writings, Schopenhauer acknowledges that mystical
experience might provide this sort of knowledge, and this view was
probably only reinforced by his increasing interest in Upanishadic and
Buddhistic thought as the years went by. Over time, however,
Schopenhauer did achieve a more perspicuous expression of the view
that the conflict-ridden daily world is only a horrible vision
compelled by human nature, as it exercises its efforts to achieve
knowledge at both the general (subject-object) and specific (space,
time, causality) levels of the principle of sufficient reason.

Schopenhauer's philosophy has been widely influential, partly because
his outlook acknowledges traditional moral values without the need to
postulate the existence of God. In addition, his view allows for the
possibility of absolute knowledge by means of mystical
experience. Schopenhauer also implicitly challenges the hegemony of
science and other literalistic modes of expression, substituting in
their place, more musical and literary styles of understanding. His
recognition -- at least with respect to a perspective that we
typically cannot avoid -- that the universe appears to be a
fundamentally irrational place, was also appealing to 20th
century thinkers who understood instinctual forces as irrational, and
yet guiding, forces underlying human behavior.

Among philosophers, one can cite Henri Bergson, Eduard von Hartmann,
Suzanne Langer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Hans Vaihinger, who tended to
focus on selected aspects of Schopenhauer's philosophy, such as his
views on the meaning of life, his theory of the non-rational will, his
theory of music, or his Kantianism.

Schopenhauer's theory of music, along with his emphasis upon artistic
genius and the world-as-suffering, was also influential among
composers such as Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvorák,
Gustav Mahler, Hans Pfitzner, Sergei Prokofiev, Nikolay
Rimsky-Korsakoff, Arnold Schönberg, and Richard Wagner.

Schopenhauer's 19th century historical profile is
frequently obscured by the shadows of Kant, Hegel, Marx, Mill, Darwin
and Nietzsche, but more than is usually recognized, Schopenhauer
perceived the shape of things to come in his rejection of
rationalistic conceptions of the world. The hollow, nihilistic
laughter expressed by the Dada movement at the turn of the century in
the midst of WWI, reiterates feelings that Schopenhauer's philosophy
had embodied almost a century earlier. Schopenhauer's ideas about the
importance of instinctual urges at the core of daily life also
reappeared in Freud's surrealism-inspiring psychoanalytic thought, and
Schopenhauer's conviction that human history is going nowhere, became
keynotes within 20th century French philosophy, after two
World Wars put a damper on the 19th century anticipations
of continual progress that had captured the hearts of thinkers such as
Hegel and Marx.